A consortium of farmers and agriculture-processing businesses are hoping to build a hub at the former Titan Motor Home plant in Canastota to ship locally grown food to consumers

The Growing Upstate Food Hub is a consortium of six farmers that joined forces to address the capital expense, management and logistical challenges associated with food processing.

They plan to invest $4 million to create a 45,000-square-foot facility where farmers can store products and process food into retail-ready packages. The project could be up and running by the end of 2013, organizers said, and will create at least 20 construction jobs and 30 full-time jobs.

Before coming together, each consortium member had been planning to construct its own processing facility.

But organizers say building the food hub will allow them to save capital expenses by sharing space and resources.

Current members include:

Side Hill Farmers Cooperative, which is currently marketing beef and pork products;

Produce wholesalers Upstate NY Growers and Packers;

Kriemhild Dairy Farms, a cooperative which created its own brand of butter made from milk from grass-fed cows;

Canastota Malting, a start-up barley-malting operation;

A group of local hops producers with limited access to processing services; and,

Holmes Acre, a dairy farm planning to bottle its own milk.

The group hopes to bring on even more entities to share the space, which will include common warehousing for frozen and refrigerated products, dry goods storage and office space, in addition to separate loading docks and processing space for each commodity.

The Farmers Market Federation of New York also plans to operate a retail store and teaching kitchen and manage a community farmers’ market on the site.

Madison County Agricultural Economic Development Coordinator Beth McKellips said the project will be one of the first of its kind nationwide.

“There are very few examples of this being done, where there will be processing facilities for different commodities under one roof,” McKellips said. “This is a unique model, and ambitious.”

The project will get some help from a number of grant programs, including a $1.5 million grant from the Regional Economic Development Council and a $1.7 million Restore New York grant that the village of Canastota received to rehabilitate the Titan property, which fell into disrepair after a fire.

For more information
Farmers or farmer groups interested in processing warehousing or distribution space may contact Beth McKellips at 684-3001 ext. 126 or by email at bam233@cornell.edu.